Flat Earth

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

... the Plymouth settlers, who happily allied themselves with a native tribe that they descibed as savages, to the considerable benefit of both sides.  One of these 'savages' greeted them in English!

This needs a little more nuance.

 

Today is Thanksgiving Day - an odd custom with many underpinnings related to the separatist, puritan and Calvinist reactions to the Tudor and Stuart, Church of England, though to these sects a Day of Thanksgiving meant prayer and fasting, not feasting, hearth and home.

 

The Plymouth colony of 1620 found themselves in a land depredated by European diseases, resulting from many landings by logging and raiding parties over many years prior to 1620*. The English speaker, commonly called Squato, had been taken in one of those raids and brought to England before making his way back to North America.

 

* Let's remember that the first permanent English colony began at Jamestown in Virginia in 1604. (Not counting Vikings or the Irish) Europeans had been on the coast for a century. Giovanni Caboto's voyage for Henry VII took place in 1497.

 

The alliance with the Wampanoag happened because the disease depleted Wampanoag needed allies to defend themselves against their traditional Narragansett rivals. The settlement probably would not have survived without the prior epidemics that depleted the native populations.

 

It would all end with the so-called "King Phillip's War" where Metacomet (Sachem of the Wampanoag) attacked the expanding Massachusetts Bay Colony - the Plymouth Colony being largely subsumed by the Puritan settlement in Boston in 1630.

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

18 minutes ago, NorthBrit said:

What happened at nearly twenty past four in the afternoon?

That's time to prepare the 'paraphernalia' for 4:20.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I was surprised to learn that Biden will be only the second POTUS to be a Catholic.

You might be more surprised to learn that seven of the nine current Supreme Court Justices is a Catholic.  The remaining two are Jewish.

 

The previous three justices, either retired or who died in office were also either Catholic or Jewish.

[AndyID]

We are a bit over 400 miles from the start of Highway 95. The road department eventually changed the mile markers to 419.9 to prevent them getting nicked.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/20/a-map-of-the-remaining-420-mile-markers-in-the-u-s/

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by AndyID
Link

[AndyID]

I just noticed the name of the journalist under the photo in that link.

 

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I was surprised to learn that Biden will be only the second POTUS to be a Catholic.

I'm not.   Have we ever had a catholic prime minister?  I know we had a Jewish one, Disraeli.

 

The WASP/Manifest Destiny elite of the US are pretty entrenched, as are the 'Royaliste' French establishment of the Old South, and the Scots Jacobite element of plantation owners as well.  A lot of European privilege and sectarianism survives in the US in purer form than it does in the bulk of the European societies that they originated in.  One can hardly blame the Plymouth settlers for most of this...

[Welchester]

54 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I'm not.   Have we ever had a catholic prime minister?

 

 

Tony Blair, although I don't think he actually became Catholic until he had left office. Cherie certainly was.

 

[tomparryharry]

2 hours ago, Welchester said:

 

 

Tony Blair, although I don't think he actually became Catholic until he had left office. Cherie certainly was.

 

Keeping strictly within the bounds of religion & politics, but Mr Blair was, during, and after.

[Joseph_Pestell]

I think that Welchester is right that Tony Blair did not officially become a Roman Catholic until after he left office. Until recently it was illegal for the Prime Minister to be a Roman Catholic, as it still is, I think, for anyone in the line of succession for the throne.

[Clearwater]

On 26/11/2020 at 21:30, The Johnster said:

I'm not.   Have we ever had a catholic prime minister?  I know we had a Jewish one, Disraeli.

 

The WASP/Manifest Destiny elite of the US are pretty entrenched, as are the 'Royaliste' French establishment of the Old South, and the Scots Jacobite element of plantation owners as well.  A lot of European privilege and sectarianism survives in the US in purer form than it does in the bulk of the European societies that they originated in.  One can hardly blame the Plymouth settlers for most of this...

Sorry, that’s incorrect.  Whilst Disraeli’s father was Jewish, Disraeli converted to Anglicism aged 12.  I do not think the UK has had a practicing Jew as PM.